Day: December 13, 2019

Categories
This Week in FCPA

Episode 183 – the We’re No. 2 edition

Ericsson settles a long running FCPA enforcement action, coming at No. 2 on the all-time list. Tom lectures Jay about the need for his Patriots to stop cheating (again). They also other of this week’s top compliance and ethics stories which caught their collective eyes.

  1. Ericsson settles the second largest FCPA enforcement action of all time.
  2. Ericsson comes in the FCPA Blog’s all-time Top Ten FCPA Enforcements and also Number 2 on the all-time Disgorgement List.
  3. Jay Clayton backs off his threat to cap SEC whistleblower awards.
  4. Director of Treasury’s anti-money-laundering watchdog calls for Congress to pass corporate transparency legislation.
  5. Jay looks at the birth of the corporate integrity monitor.
  6. Did they look at petty cash? €84MM goes missing from Football Association of Ireland. Jonathan Rausch.
  7. Does better corp governance leader to better corporate agility? Kenneth Lehn.
  8. How and why should you manage your corp culture? Jim DeLoach
  9. CFIUS report to Congress. Lawyers from Simpson Thatcher.
  10. How to manage risk when the BOD is overconfident? Matt Kelly.
  11. Patriots caught cheating again. Do they even care? Max Kellerman.
  12. On the Compliance Podcast Network, Tom had a five part podcast series on the Hughes Hubbard 2019 FCPA and Anti-Bribery Alert. In Part 1, Kevin Abikoff provides and overview of the Alert and explains this year’s theme; in Part 2, Laura Perkins on the year in FCPA; in Part 3, Bryan Sallaman on developments from France; in Part 4 Mark DeBernardis on MDBs and anti-courrption enforcement and in Part 5, Salim Saud on developments in Brazil.

Tom Fox is the Compliance Evangelist and can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. Jay Rosen is Mr. Monitor and can be reached at jrosen@affiliatedmonitors.com. For more information on how an independent monitor can help improve your company’s ethics and compliance program, visit our sponsor Affiliated Monitors at www.affiliatedmonitors.com.

Categories
Creativity and Compliance

Garin Bergman On Improving Access to Information

Where does creativity fit into compliance? In more places than you think. Problem-solving, accountability, communication, and connection – they all take creativity. Join Tom Fox and Ronnie Feldman on Creativity and Compliance, part of the Compliance Podcast Network to explore these issues. Today’s episode is about creative ways to improve accessibility of your compliance program. Our guest is Garin Bergman, is the former CCO at IDEX Corp. He is the founder of the PalmTree Compliance Application which is “Compliance in the Palm of Your Hand”.
Some of the highlights include:

  • Bergman’s journey from CCO to product innovator.
  • How can you improve accessibility of compliance training?
  • How can you get training to offline employee populations?
  • How can you improve response rates to training?
  • Why is it important to deliver training not only in a convenient mechanism but also where employees want to receive it?
  • How can compliance communications be proactive?
  • What the difference is between an App and being mobile friendly?

Resources:
Garin Bergman
LinkedIn Profile
PalmTree Website
 
Ronnie Feldman
Ronnie Feldman (LinkedIn)
Learnings & Entertainments (LinkedIn)
Ronnie Feldman (Twitter)
Learnings & Entertainments (Website)
60-Second Communication & Awareness Shorts – A variety of short, customizable, quick-hitter “commercials” including songs & jingles, video shorts, newsletter graphics & Gifs, and more. Promote integrity, compliance, the Code, the helpline and the E&C team as helpful advisors and coaches.
Workplace Tonight Show! Micro-learning – a library of 1-10-minute trainings and communications wrapped in the style of a late-night variety show, that explains corporate risk topics and why employees should care.
Custom Live & Digital Programing – We’ll develop programming that fits your culture and balances the seriousness of the subject matter with a more engaging delivery.

Categories
Daily Compliance News

December 13, 2019, the BoJo Is In edition

In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Tories win landslide in UK. End of SFO? (FT)
  • Did Mike Lynch tell ‘lie after lie”? (Is that a question or statement?). (Bloomberg)
  • Even Mexico stunned by top cop arrest for corruption. (NYT)
  • Fed lifts Consent Orders against JPMorgan and BancCorp. (NYT)
Categories
Compliance Man Chooses the Target

Special Christmas Edition

Welcome to Compliance Man Chooses the Target with Tim Khasanov-Batirov series. Today we a have a special Christmas podcast. Our goal is to highlight matters that should be on agenda of practitioners that deploy compliance programs in industries or countries of active FCPA enforcement. We target three specific matters that you might like to address in the course of implementation of your compliance program. Today we will focus on classical but evergreen topic of gifts giving.
Target #1: How to kill your corporate gifts policy?
If you work at the HQ of an international corporation and believes that all questions with gifts giving in your company are already settled many years ago you might be wrong. The most unpleasant news could be that the reason of this problem are not necessarily rogue managers in the fields, who deliberately violate rules. Look at your global gifts policy and if it says something like “gifts of nominal value are allowed” there is big chance that the problem is already there. Assume that in some countries at which your company operates per local legislation (or updates in the legislation) gifts giving to state officials are prohibited as such or this process is a subject to certain limitations. In ideal case your global policy is adopted in each jurisdiction by local compliance team. We recommend checking out if it is really so as most likely you don’t have compliance folks in each jurisdiction of corporate presence. Another typical problem is when simultaneously in each respective jurisdiction there are two policies. The global one, which allows petty gifts, even if it contains clause on prevalence of local laws and  a tailored gifts policy adopted by an office in the respective jurisdiction. In reality the personnel in the fields will get confused which policy to follow.
Target #2: Toxic Gifts
The FCPA enforcement practice clearly demonstrates absolute ban on entertainment of state officials and PEPs by companies. It is also clear that it is forbidden to give luxurious gifts and even sometimes small gifts if there is a corruption intent. Still there is a grey area for list of non-luxurious gifts which still might be considered as non-appropriate from my point of view even if there is no intent to influence decision taking. I mean alcohol, for instance. In some jurisdictions it is a common practice to give alcohol as Christmas gift. From my prospective it is not right but still it is just a personal view, not a law.
Target #3: Non-Toxic Gift
We have touched a couple of problems related to gifts giving and now it is time to get back to talking about pleasant sides of Christmas. It is time to say that Compliance Man has launched a channel at you tube called ‘Compliance Man by Timur Khasanov-Batirov” aimed on sharing compliance tips with professional community. The first video of the series called “1001 Compliance days” is available here. Please feel free to comment and subscribe.
Merry Christmas to everyone from Compliance Man!
Join us for the next episode of Compliance Man Chooses the Target with Tim Khasanov-Batirov in 2020.